Nearly 800 polling personnel staged a demonstration at Khatra in Bankura district on Saturday as they were served food packets that included items past expiry dates as well as rotten stuff.

Sources said the polling personnel, including presiding officials and first polling officers, had been called for training on Saturday. They will be engaged in conducting the voting in the Bankura Lok Sabha constituency that will go to the polls on May 25.

A polling official said they attended the training braving the heat wave that touched 44.6 degrees Celsius on Saturday but they were given food packets that had rotten items.

“The cake served was past expiry date and the chicken patty had fungus all over. Furthermore, we did not get enough drinking water in the unbearable heat. This is why we demonstrated,” said the polling official.

Another official asked if district authorities could not arrange basic needs like food and water in this scorching heat for polling officials, how they could believe that the administration would keep all amenities ready for them when they would go to the booths to conduct the elections.

Additional district magistrate (development) in Bankura, Arindam Biswas, who is in charge of training polling personnel, said the authorities had engaged a distributor to supply the food packets.

“As soon as we received complaints that the food items were not up to the mark, we decided to blacklist the distributor. We have assured the polling officials that such a mistake will not happen again,” he said.